What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached for the Epiphany 2013

07/01/2013

Here’s the sermon I preached for the Epiphany. My day was made when a member of the congregation came up to me at the end beaming. He introduced himself to me as a member of the Iranian Community of Glasgow and said: “We, we Iranians were the first to worship the Baby Jesus!”

And they brought unto Bethlehem gold, frankincense and myrrh.

I must say how pleased I am to be preaching this morning â€“ the Epiphany is one of my favourite feast days. I suspect that you would find that many priests said the same. I find it oddly moving to preach on the Epiphany gospel. It is immediately apparent to me that we are in the realm of myth and magic. The Magi shimmer into view from the East and bring their curious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh and there is no getting away from it. This is a strange story.

And the thing that moves me about Epiphany is that here in our worship today we use the gifts the Magi brought. Gold â€“ both our symbolic colour of joy and celebration that befits the feast and also in wedding rings that we shall bless today in thanksgiving for one coupleâ€™s marriage. And frankincense and myrrh â€“ both burning today in the thurible. The sweet smell of the incense conquering the tartness of burning myrrh and rising heavenward. Together they are a symbol not only of our collective prayer rising to heaven but also that the sweetness of Godâ€™s love always triumphs over bitterness in the end.

The use of incense in churches has long been rising though not nearly as fast as the use of incense in peopleâ€™s homes.

This kind of thing has led to controversy in Scotland. Some people donâ€™t like the smell of incense and there have been countless disputes between priest and people about its use. (more…)

Epiphany, incense, Iranian community in Glasgow, Jacobites

10 responses to “Advertise, advertise, advertise!”

Matt Hanson

02/10/2008

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson

Reply
Eamonn

02/10/2008

How naff can you get? It was worth listening to a professional advertiser’s comments on the Lichfield advert on the Sunday programme on Radio 4.

Reply
Gavin Drake

02/10/2008

Adverts that make people in the church feel comfortable are likely to be completely irrelevant to people outside the church. As the instigator and creator of the Lichfield football adverts campaign I stand by them – they did what we wanted them to do. We had a target and we achieved that target. The professional advertising chap on Radio Four was anti the adverts; but he was also anti the entire Christian message as a self-proclaimed militant atheist. His best effort? “Life” – which is a campaign he created for the Billy Graham missions 20 years ago. Hardly creative (now, 20 years on) nor fresh. His message was that the church should get rid of Jesus, God and all the “after life” stuff and concentrate on making people feel good now.

One final thought, in this blog entry aren’t you demonstrating the Christian Christmas grumpetyness which you appear to be criticising in others?

Reply
kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks for your comments Gavin.

You are quite right about my grumpityness though I was not particularly being critical of it in others. Indeed, being able to rely on other people’s grumpityness is one of the things which has ensured a lot of exposure for the CAN ads, for example, the Bad Hair Day campaign and the Meek, Mild As If one. It was the (mock?) outrage of the christian community that got those ads talked about.

I’m a fan of what the CAN do, which I perhaps did not make clear in the above blog entry.

I’d be interested to know what the target was and how achieving it was measured.

I have to confess to feeling embarrassed by the Lichfield ad but then of course, it was not aimed at me.

I also commented about past CAN campaigns here and here.

Reply
Kennedy

02/10/2008

Having listened to the CAN adverts, I am left asking what the message was and who was the target audience? If the intention was to familiarise the audience with the characters and motifs from the Christmas story then OK, but there is more that could be said in the time.

You’ll permit me a small plug for the stuff that GRF produce.

Have a listen:

http://smallvoice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/01-ms-christianity.mp3

Yes, this uses the style of the M&S ads but I think that it communicates something about the Christian message and in a form that a non-church person could relate to.

The judges at the Jerusalem Awards seemed to like it as they awarded it the premier award in the ‘Shorts’ category at their awards ceremony last week.

If you are looking for creative audio to use in churches or schools then have a look at http://www.audiopot.org.

Kennedy

Reply
kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks Kennedy. I like the M and S Ad. Very clever. I always like hearing Albatross (the music underneath) because it reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago who used to play it (on large pipe organs) during communion.

One of the drawbacks of the ads that I was speaking about above is that they all depend on knowing the Christian story. That is perhaps legitimate in a Back to Church Sunday as it is presumably aimed at folk who have gone away knowing something or other.

The line about the penalty does kind of imply that substitutionary atonement is what we believe though.

The Lichfield ad certainly got a lot of coverage and if that was the intention, it succeeded.

Reply
Elizabeth

03/10/2008

I must admit I found the racing advert amusing. The football ones leave me cold. Aside from issue about inclusivity and dubious theology, I think living in Glasgow has made me very wary of any connection between religion and football.

Reply
Coxy

03/10/2008

I think that the football one is excellent, as does my wife (and she can’t tell the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal – I guess they do both play in red though!). How is it not inclusive of men and women? As I see it there is good build up play from Mary and Joseph before Jesus scores…

Reply
kelvin

06/10/2008

Hi Nick

I’ve just rescued your comment from a spam filter – don’t know why it got swallowed.

At St Mary’s we tend to avoid language like “men” where what is really meant is men and women, “mankind” when what is meant really is humanity etc

This affects things like the language we use for hymns.

We’d never sing, “Brothers, this Lord Jesus, shall return again” for example. In a mixed crowd it just seems rude.

There is an ongoing degate about how far to go with this policy but by and large, language inclusive of men and women is the norm at St Mary’s and exclusive language tends to jar and be distractive when you’ve got used to more inclusive language in church. Thus the ad is something we couldn’t use because of the use of the word “man” meaning something other than just men.

Reply
ryan

06/10/2008

The term “banter”, as featured in the ad, should also be used by no-one anyway (and only partly because of Chewing the Fat). O the amount of people that have endured abuse and had it expained away as “just banter”.

Wondering if “male” ads like this are ok if one also does female-centered advertising, or if the whole idea is hoary sexism. St.Silas does a Women 4 Women thing which I believe is popular. No Men 4 Men though.

Hope I’m immune from the st.silasite ensnaring spam filter
;-).

Reply